


Sister's Keeper

by Aurumite



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Gen, Sisterly bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurumite/pseuds/Aurumite
Summary: Myrrh still wouldn’t look at her, so Eirika tilted up her chin. “I mean it. After all, my brother’s sister is my sister.”“That’s just what he said!”The smile that broke across her petite face was the brightest Eirika had ever seen from her. She couldn’t help but to return it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started for a prompter on tumblr requesting an exploration of what happens when Ephraim tells Myrrh to go sleep with Eirika. Finished for Magvel Week for the prompt "heart."

“It’s because we’re on the march, he said,” Myrrh mumbled to her toes. “I understand. Brother needs to sleep.”

 _But I don’t, apparently._ Eirika thought it a touch dryly, but all irritation slipped away when she looked back to Myrrh.

They stood at the edge of camp, one on the way to the creek to wash her face, the other just returning from the task. Fog still rose from the dewy grass, and for the moment Eirika felt pocketed by it, in a silent cloud where all she could focus on was the damp fall of Myrrh's hair.

Her request made perfect sense. Ephraim was the king and commander. Only Eirika knew how badly his nightmares plagued him, how pristine he had to keep his reputation if he wanted to retain the godlike trust the army placed in him. Everyone, everything demanded that he be rested, glowing, radiating confidence and control. But Eirika…what their soldiers desired from her, she supposed, was her love and reassurance, and a smile took much less energy to offer.

“He does need to sleep,” Eirika agreed. “So yes, I will watch over you instead. Come sleep with me, tonight.”

“Do you mean it? I'd hate to impose...”

Myrrh still wouldn’t look at her, so Eirika tilted up her chin.

“I mean it. After all, my brother’s sister is my sister.”

“That’s just what he said!”

The smile that broke across her petite face was the brightest Eirika had ever seen from her. She couldn’t help but to return it.

\---

Myrrh didn't want to sleep on her own side of Eirika's tent. Myrrh wanted to sleep with Eirika.

Eirika might have protested, after two long nights trying to figure out how to lie most closely and comfortably without Myrrh's wings interfering. But in the end, she held her tongue, for she understood Myrrh's feelings. Sometimes after her own nightmares, she'd fought back the same urge to crawl into Ephraim's tent and ask him to watch over her. And though technically Myrrh was much older than her, was she not still but a child, friendless and frightened of the monsters outside? Was there not still fragile girlishness in the curve of her ribs, the narrow set of her hips? Could Eirika not break her with her own two hands?

So she never drew away, and on the third night, they found an arrangement that would work: knees bumping, arms tucked between them, and Myrrh's wings—leathery-soft, like parchment—stretched out behind her. In the nights that followed, one wing would flop over the both of them, and Eirika would find it in the morning surrounding them as if the pale case of a cocoon, as if Eirika would emerge from it with wings of her own.

\---

Brother and protector. The words were coin-sides, the right hand leveling the lance and the left hand gripping the reins. Myrrh's breath left her every time he mounted his horse. He carried the stench of blood on his clothes, but his fingers were gentle when he touched her hair, asked if she'd been injured in battle that day.

Brother and protector. She wanted, needed nothing more than Ephraim, and yet—

—That day her safety, wholeness, hadn't come from him. She'd been ambushed by two revenants waiting in a glade. The cry behind her came hoarse and high and when she opened her eyes, confused by the lack of pain, Eirika stood over the corpses, breaking her boot into one's ribcage to keep it down, blade coated in black ooze.

“You're all right, Myrrh,” she said, voice level, blue eyes blazing, and Myrrh was.

A brother was a protector, but a sister—a sister burned beautiful and hot and bright, wiped her sword in the grass, and ordered,

“Stay close to me.”

\---

Some nights, when sleep didn't come, Eirika and Myrrh just stopped attempting it.

They rolled onto their stomachs, Myrrh swaying her wings and Eirika swinging her legs, chins on their arms, and traded their dreams. When their stomachs rumbled Eirika spoke of the food Myrrh had never tried during her long life in the forest: Frelian persimmons, and fish cooked in lemon and pepper; the blood-red pomegranates and candied figs of Grado, her Renais's wines, red and white, rich and dry and sweet and light. _When this is over,_ they swore with the other as witness, when this was all over, Myrrh would go straight home and hug her father tight. And Eirika would do her best to make hers proud.

“And if Lyon lives,” she added once, only once, “I'll take his hand and never let go.”

When they ran out of things to say, they prayed in silence together. Neither of them believed in gods, or at least not gods that listened, but it couldn't hurt, and the circles of repeating pleas were calming, and best of all was knowing that within arm's reach was a person sharing their exact thoughts, like two dance partners twirling in perfect time.

\---

Eirika woke with a cry and Myrrh opened her eyes to blindness, fingers to feverish, sweaty human-skin and she cried out too.

“Sorry,” Eirika whispered through the darkness. “I didn't mean to startle you. It was just...” Fingers groped, found Myrrh's, squeezed hard and reassuring like Myrrh had the nightmare instead. “Just a bad dream.”

“Ephraim has them too,” Myrrh noted, for they were twins, shared thoughts with glances, made her rib bones and wing tendons ache with the wholeness and a bit of jealousy. “That's why I sleep with you.”

But Eirika only laughed. “No he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. He's too brave.”

She settled back. Myrrh nestled onto her shoulder, flopped her wing over lightly, afraid to overheat her even as her damp nightgown cooled like dewy grass before dawn.

“But you're brave, too,” Myrrh murmured.

Eirika laughed again, soft. “Thank you. So are you.”

Nothing Sister said felt like an idle pleasantry. No one called Myrrh brave before. She mouthed the words silently, tasting them with this form's unforked tongue.

\---

The war was hard on Myrrh. She swallowed all her complaints, but Eirika could see the shaking of her legs when they stopped to make camp for the day, and how slowly she ate. She'd never been around so many people or lived in such close quarters. Eirika thought a girl her age—dragon's lifespan or no—should only tire herself gathering flowers or chasing playmates. Her only cares should be her studies and what she wanted for her next birthday. She should not have such hollow eyes.

Perhaps this required a little frivolity. Eirika could not end the war, but she could do that much, at least. Preparations took all day, but she returned to her tent that evening with a grin and all sorts of little jars carried in her wash rag.

“What's this?” Myrrh asked as Eirika spread it all out beside the bedroll.

“Rouge,” she said, holding up a small pot and pulling out its cork stopper to reveal scarlet wax. “For cheeks and lips both. And here, powder to hide blemishes.” She held up a glass jar and a small brush of fine hair. She picked up a tiny ink well and an even smaller brush, thin as a quill. “Eye paint.”

“Whatever for?”

“This is what sisters do when they need to rest. At least, this is what Tana and I did, growing up. I asked half the army if they carried such frivolities, and look what a collection we have between us! I suppose, over the years, habits become comforting.”

The soft strokes of the powder brush, the practiced flick of black across the eyelids, the endless run of a comb through untangled hair. In some ways, it was all she had left. The only peace.

“But it's evening, Sister.” Myrrh still sounded bewildered. “Are we going out somewhere? I'm in my night clothes...”

“And soon I will change into mine. After a long, hard day...after several of them...sometimes it's important to focus on yourself, or let someone pamper you and truss you up. It's important to do special things and feel beautiful, even if you're just going to wash your face and go to bed right afterward.”

“Beautiful?” Myrrh asked. Her hand disappeared under her thick hair, surely to feel her pointed ears.

“Yes.” Eirika looked at her more seriously, then. “I know this is hard for you, Myrrh. Marching every day, rationing food, the fighting...I just want you to rest.”

“What a strange practice,” Myrrh murmured, but finally smiled. Her eyes lit up as she scanned the bright pots and canisters again. “But it does sound fun. Sister, how do you always know just what to do?”

Eirika thought of Ephraim's grinding jaw, the blazing anger in Cormag's eyes, Ismaire's scarlet hair spread across the floor of her castle, and ignored the question.

“Let me paint your face then, Myrrh? I'll make you look like an elegant queen on her wedding day.”

Myrrh reached for the rouge. “Only if I can paint yours, too!”

“But of course. I'd like something daring.”

“How like you.” Myrrh's smile was finally childlike again as she dipped her finger into the wax.

\---

One night, camp was still as the forest before a huge storm. Ephraim didn't come to tell Myrrh goodnight, and then Eirika didn't come to bed at all. Heart quivering, Myrrh rose from her bedroll and out into the dark, damp, sticky silence.

She found both twins huddled at the edge of camp, out of sight of almost everyone, behind a copse of trees with Princess L'Arachel and Prince Innes. Ephraim sat with shoulders slumped, staring into nothing. Myrrh had never seen him slack-faced and she wanted to run to him and shake him, throw her arms around him. He reeked of dark magic and her stomach clenched. L'Arachel knelt neatly beside him, staff glowing faintly until colour returned to his lips. Eirika knelt on his other side, stroking his face with her knuckles while she glared up at Innes.

“I'd expected no less!” Innes was the only one standing. Arms folded, impenetrable. “Running out after Prince Lyon like a fool—”

“That's enough, Innes.”

“And alone, of all things—”

“Innes.”

“But it seems we've finally met the match of the Invincible Prince Ephraim—”

“ _Hold your tongue._ ”

There was such thunder in Eirika's voice, blazing and crackling like the holy magic through her sword, that Innes quieted at once. Even Myrrh took a step back, and the prince's sharp eyes flicked toward the movement.

“Girl,” he said, face guilt-softening. A hesitation; he tilted his head toward Ephraim. “Go on.”

Myrrh timidly followed his signal and knelt close enough to look into Ephraim's eyes. Ephraim focused a bit and offered her a sad smile.

“I'm sorry, Myrrh,” he said.

She'd known the stone was gone; she could feel the emptiness of it, hear the quiet of hopelessness. But hearing Ephraim admit it aloud drove it home. She didn't know how to reply.

“You shouldn't be awake,” Eirika told her then, voice soft and soothing again. She raised Myrrh up by the shoulders and pulled her close. “Let's get you back to bed.”

Myrrh let her take her hand and lead her off, let her give her a kiss on the head in Ephraim's stead, let her tuck her back in. It didn't stop her from noticing that Eirika wouldn't meet her eyes.

“I'll return shortly,” Eirika said, thick-voiced, once Myrrh was re-settled. “I'll bring Ephraim, too, once his healing is over. I don't think he should sleep alone tonight.”

Myrrh reached for Eirika's face, nudged out a fat, hot tear, wiped it away. Eirika sniffed and drew a hand across her face.

“Forgive me. Everything will be all right, Myrrh, I'm simply—I'm tired, is all—”

“If you're my sister,” Myrrh whispered, “does that make me yours?”

Eirika finally met her eyes. “Of course it does.”

“I can be the strong one tonight, then.” Myrrh trailed her hand down to clutch Eirika's hand: thin human nails, five fingers. Bony, calloused, gentle. Her own felt so small.

Eirika had saved her life, kept her secrets, soothed her to sleep, and never once asked for anything in return. And now, in her one moment of need, she thought she should bear it alone?

“Go look after Brother. I'll wait for you. I have a wing for each of you.”

“So you do.” Eirika smiled even though it made tears pour down her face. She squeezed Myrrh's hand and went back out into the darkness.

 


End file.
